Hi! Welcome! So here we are...

Hello! This is my film blog, hope you enjoy! (Okay, maybe that is a bad way to start this whole thing, let me try this again...)

If you're reading this post, I would like to formally welcome you to No Films Left Behind (NFLB), where I, one of the many film addicts/struggling university undergraduate student out there, will talk about (hopefully) EVERY movies that I have seen in theatres.

With the emergence of different ways to enjoy this form of art right now (especially online streaming), movie going is holding strong as a part of our culture. It is something  that we do for leisure on a Sunday night, a nice cozy place to go to on a cold winter days. And for some people, it may just be a ticket to a really expensive napping couch. Whatever it is, we can all find something special while we sit back and relax for the next two hours or so.  

With many movie titles to choose from, we might ask ourselves: What is a good movie? How can you tell the masterpieces apart from those that are just created to make a quick buck? We look at reviews, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB... But at the end of the day, those are all subjective! YOU cannot tell whether a movie is good or not until you see it for yourself, and that is exactly what I'm doing here. I am giving you MY honest opinion on what is shown right in front of me, and maybe this will persuade you to give a try for films like Holmes and Watson, which is now panned by critics to the point that even Netflix would not take it in, but I still saw it as the most hilarious 90 minutes this past holiday season. I believe that even the most horrendous flick in the public eye has some redeemable qualities, and that is what I am always looking for when sitting in the dark auditorium.  

As time goes on, I'm sure that many people will ask me: Why this blog? Why am I doing this? To be honest, I'm not really sure. But I can tell you this - I just finished the series finale of Six Feet Under last week. (By the way, it is a decent show, but I suggest you to fast forward Season 4.) As I went through the series in the past eight months, I found that I can in a way relate to Claire Fisher (Lauren Ambrose), the youngest child in the Fisher funeral home. [SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH] 

At the beginning of the series, Claire Fisher is a High School junior who is going through somewhat atypical teen angst - she learns to get high, dates a boyfriend with drug addiction. And her passion for art is probably the only quality that is keeping her normal. When she graduates from high school and attends an Art School, things just gets crazier. She dates a self-absorbing fellow artist who is bisexual (which she finds out later in Season 3), tries to be a lesbian at one time with her classmate, and has some moments with her sister-in-law's younger brother, who teaches at her school and is basically a sister-loving maniac when not taking medications. In Season 5, Claire still cannot find her life's meaning and quits art school, and is forced to work at a lawyer temp job after finding out she is denied of art grant. Things are finally going her way in the final episode, where she is offered an assistant job in a photography company in New York. Claire decides (with the help of her late brother Nate) to go to New York even after discovering that her position is no longer available because of company consolidation the day before her supposed departure. And there she is, driving to New York and starting her new life of uncertainty. BUT, in the final montage, we learn that Claire ends up pursue her passion in photography and dies peacefully at the age of 102, making her the last main character standing in the series. 

Just like Claire in the final episode, I'm not sure about where this blog will take me either. Maybe it will help me to improve my critical reading/writing skills, maybe it will help others to see movies differently, or maybe it will be a conversation piece in Graduate Studies application office... Who knows? Whatever its purpose is, this blog is what matters for me AT THIS MOMENT, and no matter where it takes me, if I hold on to this one chance, maybe it will turn out to be something good! Maybe if I look back at this a couple years from now, I can see this as a platform where I started to shape into who I really am by expressing the passion for film that I cannot show elsewhere. 

Before I go, there are just a couple more things you need to know about me and this blog:

- As you can see above, there WILL BE spoilers in my posts, but before Wix blog system can develop a function for me to change the font colour within a single post so I can "hide" the spoilers, I will put them in bold and give you a heads up in the previous paragraph.

- I consider myself as a relatively sensitive person. So I don't really do well with haters. If you have any comments, suggestions, concerns, feel free to let me know! If you really hate what I write or disagree with what I say here, instead of just criticizing, tell me WHY do you think that way and what can I do to improve it.

- I ALMOST NEVER swear. In fact, if I start an "Oopsy jar" like Stephanie does in A Simple Favor, I would not even have the money to buy a movie ticket by the time I'm 40 (that is 17.5 years from now)! But in extreme circumstances, where I'm extremely emotional about something or for artistic reasons, I will censor the words accordingly without losing the context (i.e. f***ing bulls****).

That's it for now! Look out for the reviews of A Dog's Way Home, Glass and The Kid Who Would be King coming later this month! I hope that you will find everything here interesting and worth your time. See you soon!

In the final scene of Six Feet Under finale, Claire Fisher (Lauren Ambrose) is on her way to New York, starting her new journey of unknown.

#TheOneChance